


The Primal Sounds

by Goldmonger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Dean Winchester, Mental Instability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective John Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Survivor Guilt, Young Winchesters (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26334769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: Sam sprinted, rain soaking into his clothes and hair and sneakers. His footsteps fell in a squelching rhythm as he hurtled over tussocks of grass, and he realised distantly that his school pants were also covered in muck. Not that it mattered, Sam knew. Nothing might matter, after this.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, John Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 56





	The Primal Sounds

**Author's Note:**

> \- Title taken from the poem 'Bolinas' by Phyllis Harris.

Sam sprinted, rain soaking into his clothes and hair and sneakers. His footsteps fell in a squelching rhythm as he hurtled over tussocks of grass, and he realised distantly that his school pants were also covered in muck. Not that it mattered, Sam knew. Nothing might matter, after this. He could see the two figures from where he was still separated by half a field, the smaller one listing despite support from the other, and both were coloured darkly in the grey dawn.

Sam’s legs pumped faster. 

Weeds snagged at his ankles and sent him stumbling once or twice, but sheer doggedness kept him up, and moving. He could see Dad’s face, ghostly pale where it emerged from the treeline, and the top of Dean’s head, lolling towards his chest. He was already gasping when he skidded to a stop beside them, and he couldn’t say whether it was from exertion or building panic. He realised he was still clenching the walkie-talkie in his hand, the one that had crackled to life with Dad’s harried instructions to leave the Impala and regroup by the breaching point. He’d actually said ‘breaching point’, like they were some defunct military unit under a FUBAR commander, like they were soldiers, one man down, down and not getting up – 

“Dean,” Sam breathed, but his brother’s form was now completely limp, his skin so white it nearly glowed. His shirt was ripped to shreds on his left side, Dad’s flannel wrapped tightly around his waist, presumably to staunch the bleeding. It wasn’t working, Sam thought wildly, seeing the creeping red stains across Dean’s stomach and thighs. It wasn’t working.

“Damn it, Sam, help me,” Dad snarled, and Sam flinched, scrambling to slip under Dean’s free arm, the one drenched in blood, the one he’d probably held across his torn abdomen. He gripped Dean’s waist and felt his knuckles brush the rough leather of his father’s jacket. It was oddly warm too, and damp.

“Quickly, now,” Dad ordered, as they began hurrying across the field, back to the car. “Watch his leg. It broke.”

He said it so matter-of-fact, like Dean’s leg was a belt strap or a shovel – something you screwed up by accident, something easily replaced.

“Dad, he needs – he needs –,”

“A hospital, I know,” Dad muttered, and Sam’s gut roiled, because Dad had already pissed off the cops and the park service by meddling in the case of the missing campers, and if he thought it was too big of a risk to mingle in the town community again he might take them back to the motel – and Sam would have to hover over Dean’s bloodless body with a sewing needle and a fifth of whiskey like he knew what he was doing – 

“Watch your step,” said Dad, sharp, and Sam tried to stop thinking, to hoist Dean up as much as he could and ignore the way his broken leg dragged behind them or the way his life was seeping into Sam’s hand-me-down hoodie –

“The fence,” said Dad, and Sam almost choked with fear as they arrived at the border of the field, several feet from where Sam had shakily parked the Impala, having driven it up from its hiding spot a mile down the road. He’d scaled the fence to run to the woods and meet Dad and Dean, but there was no way he could lift Dean over it, not like this.

“Hold him,” hissed Dad, easing himself away from Dean’s side. Sam took the weight with a grunt, reminded very suddenly that Dean had been adding to his muscle over the summer. He didn’t waver, even so. Dean was very, very cold.

Dad took a few steps back from the fence, then ran forward and kicked it, violently, the posts and crossbars splintering with a sound like a gunshot in the still morning. Sam gaped as Dad returned, his motions rapid and decisive as he picked Dean up in a bridal carry and jogged between the shards of wood to the car. Sam ran ahead to open the door, shock clinging like frost, making him shiver.

He let Dad arrange Dean in the back seat, and scurried around to the other side. He slid carefully in beside Dean, and tentatively lifted his head to place it in his lap, as delicate with it as his trembling hands could manage. His brother’s skin was clammy, and his hair wet and dirty, raked into spikes. There was a gelatinous substance in there too, Sam thought, wiping it on his jeans. Pale pink. Stringy, like once-foamy saliva.

Dad was slamming his way into the driver’s seat, and he fished a towel out of the glove box as he turned on the ignition, tossing it at Sam.

“Press it to his side. Hard. St. Carmel’s is twenty minutes away.”

Twenty minutes.

Sam felt something cool on his cheeks, and realised he must have been crying. It felt separate from him, like the rest of the planet, like the rest of the universe. The only things that existed – the only people – were in this car.

_Twenty minutes_ , he wanted to shout, _that’s too far away_ , but he couldn’t speak and Dad was moving already anyway, shooting down the road like they’d been tied to a projectile. Sam found use of his limbs again and brought his palm over Dean’s parted mouth; there, the barest hint of an air current, and at his neck, the faintest throb of a pulse. He balled up the towel and pushed it onto Dean’s wound. He curved his fingers over Dean’s forehead like he was taking his temperature, returning the favour of thirteen years.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, as though saying it would make it true. “You’re gonna be okay.”

There was sloughing noise, a strange rasping from the front of the car, but when Sam looked up he found only the profile of his father, white and drawn against the backdrop of streaming rain. He hunched a little more. Water dripped steadily from the rattails of his hair onto Dean’s throat, and disappeared in the filth smeared into his t-shirt.

“How’s he doing,” Dad asked at one point, when the farmland whipping past the Impala had been replaced by marked junctions and townhouses, the bloated sky obscured more the further they went, the faster they drove. Sam’s hand quivered over Dean’s face, where he’d been holding it the entire time, and they exhaled together: Sam’s a strangled gust, Dean’s the softest puff of warmth. He fumbled to check his heartrate, a sluggish, drowning thing.

“Dad,” said Sam, though it came out as a croak. Dean’s lips were blue. “Dad, we have to – to hurry –,”

“I know, son,” said Dad, so quiet that Sam’s own heart started thumping enough for him and his brother both. The deadly calm was familiar, but not the new undercurrent of something else – something bitter and lonely that couldn’t – _couldn’t_ be defeat, not now, not with Dean’s survival on the line.

Words failed him, then. He was petrified, useless.

There was a squeal of tyre on asphalt as Dad jerked the steering wheel, and Sam jolted in concert, noting the modest hospital of the developing town rising from behind a hedgerow. The car screeched to a stop in front of the emergency room, hemming in an ambulance and partially blocking the parking garage for another two; Sam was just glad that the place was almost deserted this early, no-one but a handful of groundskeepers and visitors goggling at them as they started to heave themselves out of the car. Sam was slower than his father, laying Dean’s head back on the seat with painstaking care.

“Take his legs,” Dad panted, as he worked on pulling Dean out. “But watch that one, Sam, watch it – _hey!_ HEY!”

The nurse jumped at the bellow, a terrible thunder that startled birds from a nearby tree. The young woman promptly dropped her coffee, her tired expression flicking to alarm as she absorbed the sight they made – Dad and Sam covered in muck and blood, Dean slack as a hammock between them.

“Help,” Dad said, harsh, and Sam didn’t think he’d heard that from him before, but he couldn’t be sure when there were strangers popping up around him, pulling Dean out of his arms –

“We have him, honey,” someone said, holding him back, as Dean was lifted onto a gurney and wheeled away, through double doors that screened him and his deliverers. “We have him.”

*

Sam drifted, lost in a haze that stole his sense of time. He focused on following uniforms, lab coats and scrubs, and walking wherever he was told to go. He was passed through many hands before he found familiar ones, rough and calloused and crushing his shoulders. They weren’t the ones he wanted, but he leaned into them nonetheless. It then became evident to him that they were inside a waiting room, which he recognised from past experiences.

“Where,” he began, then coughed to clear the scratchiness, “Where’s –,”

“The OR,” Dad said tightly, lowering Sam into a plastic chair. He stayed standing. “He lost a lot of blood, so they need to – to fix that, and then they need to sew up his side. And splint his leg.”

Sam shuddered. “Will he die?”

There was a pause, instead of a gruff admonishment to grow up, or the usual “don’t be ridiculous, Sam.” He glanced up to see his father, immobile, the shadows cast by the harsh fluorescent lights turning him gaunt. Like a corpse.

“Dad?”

“Okay, now,” Dad said, so absently he might have been talking in his sleep. “It’s all right.”

“But, wh - what –,”

“You watch out for your brother,” said Dad, and he strode away, down the hall where Sam thought there might have been a sign for a bathroom by the exit. He couldn’t have been going to see Dean, Sam thought. There were definitely no signs for an operating theatre.

He folded himself up on the uncomfortable seat and pressed his nose between his knees, heedless of the drying blood, of the unending chill. It was supposed to be a layup, he repeated to himself for the hundredth time that morning. It was supposed to be long over by now.

“Just another Black Dog,” Dean had crowed, filling up the trunk for the hunt. “These bitches barely get me my cardio.”

Sam had known the bravado was bullshit, of course, but he still rolled his eyes dramatically at the cocky salute Dean gave him just before he vanished over the incline of the road, Dad leading him towards the woods. Sam had stared after them for a while, ignoring his stack of homework in favour of tracing the outline of the walkie-talkie in his pocket, heavier than normal. He’d had a bad feeling. He’d had it all week. Nothing that Dad would ever care to hear, of course, but his reedy concern had Dean promising to check in every ten minutes.

He’d been late by fifteen, when Dad’s voice broke over the line.

In the waiting room Sam rocked compulsively, listening to the faint beeps of life-giving machines, and the shuffling of doctors, nurses, and patients passing by in the hallway. Minutes passed, then an hour. The traffic of hospital residents increased, as did the volume of voices and the clattering of equipment. His dad didn’t come back.

Sam tried to imagine what Dean would say about all this, to make him feel better, but all he saw in place of his brother’s signature smirk was blood. He curled his hands into fists, felt the residue there crack and flake. He should wash it off, he thought, maybe ask one of the employees avoiding him for a rag, or spare clothes. But what if Dean died and this was all he had left? Some stains on his thrift store jeans? Wouldn’t that be like throwing him away, using him up and leaving him, careless – so careless – like going into the woods with a shotgun, and coming out with his brother in pieces –

“Mr Junstrom?”

Sam glanced up, and the nurse looming over him winced, her hand coming up to not quite touch his shoulder. “Oh – I thought your father – sweetie, are you all right?”

Sam was crying again, like a baby. He wiped his eyes furiously, and stood up under his own power, making the nurse step back. The distraught expression never left her face, and Sam’s breath caught in his chest. “Is Dean – is he – is he okay?”

The nurse took a beat to recover from his gory appearance, checking the clipboard balanced in the crook of her elbow. “Dean Junstrom, yes. He’s out of the OR. The doctor would like to speak with your father – that man was your father, yes?”

“Yeah,” said Sam, numbly. “Dean’s out – does that – does that mean –,”

“He’s going to be fine,” the nurse said kindly, and this time she did pat his shoulder, and Sam permitted himself a moment to sag with relief, to be comforted by a professional’s certainty. He gulped in a lungful of air like he’d been gagged for the past two hours, and his vision started to clear. It was like the world was filtering back in colours other than red.

“I have to see him.”

“Of course,” the nurse said, frowning, “but we need a parent or legal guardian to discuss outpatient appointments and antibiotic prescriptions, if your brother is under eighteen, that is. Do you know where your father went?”

“He had to run an errand,” said Sam, not caring that it sounded like their dad had run off to do grocery shopping. He had one thought in his head. “Can I see Dean? Please?”

The nurse’s lips formed a thin, disapproving line, but she nodded, shepherding Sam out of the waiting room and down the hall, past the large room within which Dean had presumably been saved by unknown heroes. Sam was sweating. He had to concentrate on not tripping over his own feet.

The nurse led him into a nearly empty ward, the only other occupants either asleep or hidden behind partition curtains. Sam could barely spare them a second’s attention, breaking from the nurse’s side to run to the nearest bed, where Dean lay ashen and bruised but _alive_ ; he was sprouting tubes from his nose and sternum and the back of his hand, his left leg bound in a plaster cast, but he was free of grime and breathing regularly under a heap of blankets. Sam slumped in the bedside chair and sighed out, joining in the rhythm of Dean’s chest, rising, falling.

The nurse advised him in not-so-subtle terms to clean up in the bathroom, and to notify a nurse when – though he could tell she meant “if” – his father returned. She then told him specifically where the call button for the orderlies was beside Dean, like she thought he was a little kid or something.

“We’ll be fine,” he assured her, though he said it watching Dean. “We’ll be fine.”

She left them alone, though clearly concerned. Sam wasn’t sorry that he couldn’t spare the energy to properly keep up the personas their dad had crafted, to sit there and prattle lies about their family, about some fake job that kept Dad fake busy. He had been up for hours, helping to prepare for the hunt, and then waiting it out. He had aided in an emergency evacuation from the monster’s lair. He had been forced to picture a future without his brother and best friend, a life where it was just him, and Dad. He was tired. He was so very tired.

He scooted as close as possible to Dean’s bed, pulling his chair with him. He folded his arms next to Dean’s hip and dropped his head on top of them, and had barely shut his eyes when he was fast asleep.

*

Sam came to consciousness groggily, with a foul taste in his mouth and a dull ache in his neck. He straightened up and blinked the hospital ward into view, the morning’s events descending on him like a ton of bricks.

“There he is!”

His head shot up, twinging his neck, but he barely noticed. His brother was sitting up in bed, a tray over his knees and a straw poking from the corner of his mouth into a carton of juice. He still looked wan, blooms of purple and yellow across his cheekbones and forearms, but he was alert and grinning too.

“You look like crap, Sammy,” he said jovially, setting down the juice box. “Don’t they have soap around here?”

“Dean,” he said, and then he had to stop, because his voice was already prone to breaking and he didn’t want to embarrass himself further.

Dean didn’t seem to share the same compunctions, his amusement fading slightly as he pushed the tray down to his feet and opened his arms. Sam lunged, but restrained himself from throwing his entire body weight on top of Dean, the way he was used to doing. He settled for burying his face in his shoulder and keeping his limbs in check, wary of nudging the cast, or the fresh stitches under Dean’s ribs.

“Thought you were dead,” he said, muffled.

He felt Dean breathe deeply. “Not yet,” he said, and squeezed him tight.

After a while Sam drew back, though he didn’t go far, curling up on his chair. Dean cleared his throat, looking a little misty, though Sam knew better than to comment on it. He attempted a smile instead.

“H-how d’you feel?”

“Still kicking,” said Dean, then caught sight of his leg. “God damn it. You know what I mean.”

Sam chuckled, and he was relieved to find that it almost felt normal again. “You’re gonna be laid up for like, months with that thing.”

“Six weeks,” Dean shot back, almost offended. “I’d never be off the job for that long. I’m a pro, dude.”

Sam’s tongue dried to a husk as he imagined Dean back hunting, not quite steady on his bum leg. He imagined him falling in front of a werewolf, not being quick enough to dodge a ghost’s biting grasp, tripping into a grave. Instances where his luck didn’t just run out, but vanished.

“You can take some time off, Dean,” he retorted, a little terse. “The monsters will still be there. They’ll always be there.”

Dean didn’t seem to register the rawness of his tone, shrugging as he wrung out the last of his juice. “I can’t do the geekboy research thing, man, I’d go nuts. I have to be out there, in the thick of it.”

“Like last night.”

Dean met his gaze, and his shoulders fell. “I plugged that bitch with silver. Would’ve killed it too, if it hadn’t landed on my leg. Dad got a shot off just after, which must’ve ended the fight, because next thing I know, we’re hauling ass through the woods. Or Dad was. I was busy passing out.”

Sam can visualise the scene all too well. It could have been lifted from any one of his myriad nightmares, all varying in degrees of violence, most ending with half or all of his family dead.

“Yeah, I – I know about the last part. I helped bring you back to the car.” _It’s okay. You’re okay._ “It was horrible, Dean.”

Dean shifted in the bed, though there wasn’t much he could do with an anchor like his cast. His fingers drummed restlessly, like there was something he wanted to hold on to, but couldn’t. “Sorry you saw that,” he said quietly. “But it’s all good now, right?”

Sam was incensed. “You look like a building fell on you. So not really.”

“Eh.” Dean waved him off, leaning back into his nest of pillows. “Small price to pay to keep people from dying. Dad would agree with me.”

The realisation that their dad was nowhere in sight sank in, along with a dose of nausea. He cast around for a hulking figure in brown leather, just in case, making eye contact with several people who quickly turned away. “I don’t believe him,” he said aloud, his hands knotted into fists. “He really just – just left.”

“No,” interjected Dean, pointing to the floor to his right. Sam looked down and discovered a duffle bag stuffed half-under his chair, like it had been shoved there in a rush. It was leaking clean t-shirts and towels, obviously having been excavated by someone while Sam was asleep. “He brought it in while we were both out,” Dean explained. “Talked to the doctor, according to the nurse.” He shrugged, too casual. “He must’ve gone to clear out the evidence of the Black Dog. And to get the rest of our guns, I guess. I dropped my Colt.”

Sam was still reeling. “He came back,” he said, feeling very slow, “and then he left again.”

“Lot to do,” said Dean, suddenly overly interested in the sleeve of his hospital gown. “The job’s demanding, Sam.”

“Yeah,” Sam muttered. The duffle bag had some of his clothes too, he saw, though no extra shoes. Resentment surged, and disappointment with it. He wanted to rage at something, but he was still sore from sleeping wrong, and shaky from seeing Dean up and about – or maybe seeing him just up, not yet about.

“Sam?”

Dean was watching him, sober, with the trace of a plea in his expression. _Don’t cause a fight,_ he seemed to say. _Not today._

“Get cleaned up,” he said instead, beckoning him close until he had the ability to tousle Sam’s barbed wire mop of hair. “You smell like a giant supernatural dog died on _you_ instead of me.”

Sam’s shower was quick and perfunctory, with most of the scrubbing being reserved for the remaining smudges of blood. He couldn’t quite stomach witnessing the pink water swirl down the drain, even knowing Dean was just one door away. The panic had been driven down so deep inside him he felt like it was a part of him now, the jittery aftershocks of it leaving him drained.

He was dressed in a flash, eager to put distance between himself and his accidental crime scene, though he regretted the still wet state of his sneakers. He squeaked back to where Dean waited, slouched precisely where he’d left him, and tried in vain to relax his clenched everything.

“You think they get NBC in here?” Dean was jabbing at the TV remote, fallaciously left behind by some sympathetic nurse, no doubt. “I’ll start climbing the walls if I have to listen to that twerp on _Good Morning America_.”

“You couldn’t climb stairs, let alone the walls,” said Sam, neatly skipping back when Dean swiped at him.

“Jeez, you are about to be so annoying. More than usual, I mean.”

“Uh huh,” Sam felt his mood lift ever so slightly as they began to strike up their ordinary routine of mindless banter. He let Dean rant about daytime television and his ravenous appetite, and managed not to freak out when Dean’s animated gestures caused him to wince.

“You should rest,” he said, choosing to ignore the way Dean scoffed at his bossy tone. “I can go and buy us sandwiches or something. Dad left money, right?”

_Surely he did that much_ , he added privately, trained to filter out direct insubordination. He could feel his father’s phantom disapprobation anyway.

“In the bag. Don’t go far, all right?”

“Not even for a meatball sub?”

Dean snorted, but Sam could tell there was a discomfort he was hiding – beyond his mangled abdomen or cracked leg. “Just stay in the zip code, numb nuts. I don’t want to have to come after you on this thing.” He smacked the hard cast.

“No problem.” Sam fished out the sparse notes in the side pocket of the duffle bag and departed, trading insults with Dean until he was far enough down the hallway that they became incomprehensible echoes. He picked up the pace as soon as he was really alone, picturing the deli two miles down the road and devising the quickest way to buy Dean’s lunch and dash back to the hospital ward. He knew he was acting clingy, but it wasn’t like his apprehension at leaving his brother was unfounded. The last time he’d done it a monster had taken a chunk out of him.

He emerged into the feeble sunlight of a mostly overcast afternoon, the parking lot of the hospital bustling with life, in diametric opposition to earlier that morning. Sam shrank a little in his worn clothes, but didn’t delay as he headed for the sidewalk that led into town. He was intent on his mission, heedless of the many infant wails, loud phone calls, and snarky family arguments; he was striding with purpose, and a confidence he held right up until the broad, black roof of the Impala snatched his attention like a bird out of the sky.

He gawped openly at the familiar car, as jarring in the parking lot full of Camrys and Skodas as a hornet in an anthill. He was drawn towards it magnetically, curiosity winning out over disgust. His initial thought, traitorous though it might have been, was that Dad had ditched them altogether, the family and the family home both. He knew Dad had been planning on giving the Impala to Dean. Maybe this was his awful, awful way of doing that.

As he got closer, it was obvious that wasn’t the case, though Sam’s confusion mounted. He could see a silhouette – unmistakeably Dad’s – sitting in the driver’s seat, ramrod straight and unmoving. Was he waiting for him? Had Dean called him somehow? It didn’t seem likely.

He knocked on the window when he was near enough. Dad was in there, all right, motionless, staring ahead of him with an oddly blank expression. Sam tried the door handle, and was surprised to find it unlocked; Dad had drilled it into them over the years that the car was their fortress when they were out during a hunt, and surely the recovery period still counted. He slid inside the car, wary of the lack of chastisement, and shut the door. He turned to study his father.

John Winchester was not a skinny or sickly man, having been a titan of strength and agility that towered over Sam his entire life. He knew his father to nurse a few too many beers some nights, and to send Sam and Dean sparring or on a series of laps while he slept half the month of November away – but he’d never, not once, ever struck Sam as _frail_ until right now.

“Dad?” he asked, his voice reedy.

His dad was frozen, his features severe, with a bluish tinge to his pale skin that reminded Sam of Dean’s body that morning. He recognised the waxy cast to it, an absence of blood in a discolouration so stark that Sam was prepared to check for a wound somewhere. His finely carven jaw, furry with a fortnight’s stubble, jumped with a spasm that looked almost painful, as violent as if he’d been stuck like that for hours. His hair was greasy and limp. His gravedigger’s hands were ribbed with flexed tendons. His eyes were glassy, the light in them dimmed as though he’d been possessed, as though some spirit had wrestled its way inside and knocked out a bulb behind his skull.

Sitting in their car, watching him now, a creeping and terrible suspicion began to slither its way into Sam’s brain: he shoved away the thought, cold all over, that there was a very real chance that Dad didn’t know exactly what he was doing.

“Dad,” he begged again, loathing the catch in the word, like he’d been screaming since he’d woken up. “Dad, what’s wrong?”

His father didn’t even twitch.

Sam searched for an aggressor beyond the windshield, and was presented with nothing but wilting shrubs and patrolling civilians. He stammered out an exorcism prayer, utterly at a loss, and was reaching for the flask of holy water under the passenger seat when Dad’s hand closed over his wrist. He held it in a vice, like a trap that had finally snapped shut. The glaze hadn’t fully disappeared from his face, and there was a weeping gouge in his bottom lip that Sam hadn’t noticed at first. He didn’t let go of him.

“Dad – what is it? Are you – are you okay?”

Dad’s eyes flicked up to meet his, and Sam had to restrain himself from recoiling.

“I saw,” Dad growled, and then he hacked, wheezing until his voice had lost most of its gravel. He inhaled, deeply, like he was taking a hit of that crap Dean’s friends smoked. “I saw fire in the war,” he said, swallowing, his Adam’s apple rolling up and down his throat. “I saw people burned, and – I saw – men, my men, marines, and they did such – such – wrong, where there were people, but we have to protect – you have to understand, see? You have to know that there was no other way – the fight, it – it –,”

He dropped Sam’s wrist and turned away, to the window again, to a place that wasn’t there. “It was worth it,” he said, hoarse. “It’s important that you know – they told us, and it was – the blood, and the burning, and the children that – I know, I know it was worth it. We wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t worth it. I _know_.”

His nails had scraped wide canals across his knuckles, and Sam saw that his dad’s bright red blood was mingling with the dark red of Dean’s old blood, stains of it covering the front of his shirt, his jacket, and his jeans. There was more of it, newer, by his hip, and Sam wondered if his dad was bitten, or scratched, or fighting off rabies without even knowing it. He wondered that because he didn’t want to think about the Vietnam War, which was one of two topics never to be broached in Dad’s presence. He felt embarrassed, like he’d seen something private.

“I won’t let it happen again,” Dad said, almost snarled, to a terror that Sam couldn’t see. “They came – it came for us, and it took her – but I saved him. I saved him. I – I –,”

He was fidgeting, itching at his screwed up hands. Sam steadied them, on impulse.

“Dad,” he said, pleaded. “What do you say we go back to the motel and – and clean up a bit?”

Dad shook his head, distracted. “Can’t leave – can’t leave them,” he muttered, and Sam’s gut swooped.

“That’s okay,” he said, as Dad went still again, appraising Sam’s hands on top of his much bigger ones with vague mystification. “That’s fine. Let’s go see Dean, then. He’s awake now. He’s going to be pissed I didn’t bring him his sandwich,” he said weakly, but at this Dad snapped to attention.

“Dean,” he said, like he was a half-forgotten memory, and he retrieved his hands to run them through his lank hair. “He’s injured. We have to see – we can’t just go, you know – you have to, have to take care of your brothers – and we can’t – can’t leave him, not when it’s not safe, not safe out in the – where is he? Where’s your brother, where’s –,”

Dad started, and grabbed his shoulder, squeezing hard. “Sammy,” he said, eyes shining. “Sammy, I – are you all right? Why aren’t you with – why aren’t you with Dean?”

Sam was speechless for a moment, but summoned his wits from somewhere. “He’s in bed,” he said, trying not to be frightened, trying to be grown up, because he’d never felt so out of his depth before and he couldn’t find his way out by acting like a dumb little kid. “He’s upstairs,” he continued, forcing himself to be firm. “He’s in the hospital. We should go and see him.”

Dad nodded, his grip loosening. “We should go and see him,” he repeated. “Sammy,” he said, to some tree or cloud behind the steering wheel. “Sammy, I was so worried.”

A lump rose in Sam’s throat.

“I know, Dad,” he said, and he fumbled his way out of the car, walking around to the other side to collect his father. He stripped him of his dirty jacket and replaced it with his Fed jacket from the trunk, gathering the rest of the suit for him to change into later. He took the keys from Dad’s pocket and locked the car, and then he held his dad’s hand for the first time in many years, tugging him towards the hospital. They were an object of fascination for plenty as they made their way inside, though no-one stopped them. Sam thought it was for the same reason people had avoided parking next to their creaking, splattered black muscle car, so discomfiting in a place of healing, and in the light of day.

He made it to Dean’s ward in record time, his heart pounding as he imagined some complication – some nurse coming to tell them he was taken into surgery again, or his vitals had crashed while he was out – nothing they could do –

“Sam, hey. You – _Dad?_ ”

Dean was awake and alive and bemused, his enshrined leg now elevated on a heap of pillows.

“Son,” Dad greeted tightly. “You – you look well. They stitched you – stitched you up good.”

“Sure did,” said Dean, though he glanced to Sam for an explanation, one Sam wasn’t ready to dish out just yet.

“C’mon,” he said in undertones, shunning the audience of his brother, other patients and associated friends and family that populated the rest of the ward as he led Dad to the bathroom. He placed the spare clothes on the lid of the toilet seat and pointed out the towels.

Dad huffed, gently. “I know how to take a shower, son,” he said, but it was quiet, and riddled with exhaustion. His eyes were unmistakeably clearer now: a dark forest green, cognizant but dull.

“I know,” Sam replied, and he wanted to say something foolish, like “you’re not in a war,” or “you’re safe here,” but he wasn’t Dean, or his dad. He couldn’t construct tiny lies in their thousands to hide a gigantic, ugly truth. Even if he wanted to.

He stepped forward, and quickly hugged his father, allowing just enough time to feel his ribcage and spine under lean, cruel muscle, and specifically how warm his side felt – just over his hip, like he’d taken the rest of the claw assault that had torn Dean open.

Sam pulled back. “I’ll tell the nurse you need to be checked out,” he said, brooking no argument. “It’s all on the Junstrom card, so we can cover some of the cost before we leave town.” And then, because he wanted to hammer home the point: “you probably need antibiotics.”

Dad nodded, like a lever going up and down, up and down. “Yeah,” he said, low and strained. His arm stretched out, but fell short of Sam. He looked away, brushing at his forehead, his cheeks, furiously keeping himself together, but Sam could see the pieces falling.

“Sorry you saw that,” Dad ground out, putting space between them. “I just – I just got tired, back there. I’m not crazy,” he finished, strung out, bordering on anger.

Sam was cramped with guilt. “Don’t worry about it, Dad,” he said, hoping he sounded like Dean, like a person his father could trust implicitly. “Do you – would you like to talk? About - about it, I mean.”

“No.” Dad’s back was a wall. It wouldn’t let anything, not even a tremor through.

“Okay,” Sam said, he whispered. “Okay.”

He left, closing the door behind him. He went over to Dean and collapsed into the bedside chair.

“No sandwich?” asked Dean. He was scratching at his thigh, just above the cast. He was perplexed by their dad’s appearance, Sam could tell, but he wouldn’t probe the topic now.

“Sorry,” said Sam. “No. I’m – sorry.”

“No sweat,” said Dean lightly. “Dinner is in like, ten minutes, anyway.” He pointed at the duffle bag. “Gimme that, would you?”

Sam obliged him, and Dean scrabbled around in it for a while until he came upon a sharpie, popping off the cap and aiming it at Sam. “Am I gonna have to draw dicks on my own cast, then, or what?”

Sam’s grin arrived slowly, hesitantly, but it did come. It was freeing, a relief – like a splash of water after a week in the desert.

“No way,” he said, plucking the pen from Dean’s hand and climbing onto the bed, careful to avoid the leg on his own without Dean’s stream of warnings about his ‘condition’. Sam acknowledged his concerns, then bent and inscribed, with painstaking artistry, the words ‘suffering from terminal idiot disease’, from knee to ankle. Dean batted at him, and Sam was able to laugh, enough for all three of them.

They bickered, both glad to be back to normal. When Dad came back out, he and Dean both looked away.

**Author's Note:**

> \- This story contains a lot of speculation on the kind of PTSD a war veteran, widow, and demon hunter would develop. We've seen a lot of fics explore the condition in the brothers, but not John Winchester. And we know he was a very troubled guy.
> 
> \- Hope you enjoyed. Let me know what you think!


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